Gameitall 
In the world of First Person Shooter Multiplayer, PC gamers rightfully believe they have the upper hand against Console players if they were to go head to head. However when looking at the latest stats from The Coalition, developer of the latest entry into the Gears of War franchise, are showing that there might actually be some even ground when it comes to the coverbased shooter, so much so that the team are opening Multiplayer modes to PC and Xbox One Cross-Play.
The Xbox One vs PC Cross-Play is “planned to be a permanent move for the future of Social Quickplay, with the first few months being a ‘trial period’ in order to monitor player feedback,” said The Coalition community manager Liam Ashley. The company has also confirmed that Cross-Play will not be available to Core and Competitive playlists.
“Despite the closely matched performance between users on both platforms … we always want to ensure our Ranked experiences are as closely matched and competitive as possible,” the developer said.
The Data The Coalition had collected was based on several Cross-Play tests consisting of more than 750,000 matches. The team pointed out the following key notes from the test:
- Over 115,000 Unique Participants – 91/9 split from Xbox to Windows 10
- Average of 6.2 matches played by Xbox users, with 11.2 for Windows 10 users
- Over 90% of all matches during the weekend included a mix of Windows 10 and Xbox One players
- Windows 10 and Xbox players had closely-matched results when comparing Average KD, Score and Kills per match based on skill ratings
- The quality of matches improved for both Xbox and Windows 10 users – social lobbies had a higher average user count, and players completed 95% of all social matches entered vs 90% prior to Cross-play Weekend
Gears of War 4 is one of the few games that is listed in the Xbox Play Anywhere program, allowing players purchased the game digitally from the Windows 10 or Xbox Marketplace to be able to play the game on both PC and Xbox One. Other titles currently in this program includes Killer Instinct, Forza Horizon 3, and the recently released Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
